Monday, December 9, 2002

by Josh Hausman
Gazette Weatherman

Summary: Although today polar air will make it feel like winter,
unfortunately for those of us who love snow and cold milder pacific air will
arrive on Tuesday and remain for the rest of the week (the beautiful snow
cover is not going to last very long!). Highs today will be only around
freezing, but will be in the 40’s for the rest of the week. Low temperatures
may drop into the teens tonight, but will be in the 30’s thereafter. Storms
tracking up the mid-Atlantic coast are likely to bring precipitation to
Swarthmore Wednesday and again on Saturday.  Some snow or mixed
precipitation may mix with rain during Wednesday’s storm, but this weekend’s
storm is likely to be all rain.

by Pei Pei Liu
Co-Managing Editor

by Jeremy Schifeling
Co-Managing Editor

Olde Club was broken into and vandalized early Sunday morning, resulting in
extensive damage to the Club and the theft of expensive musical equipment.

At some point between 2:00 a.m., when Olde Club sound technician Dave
McCandlish ’05 locked up the building, and 10:00 a.m., when the Inflight
Rock Band arrived at the Club to practice, vandals entered and ransacked
the facility, according to Club Director Caroline Bermudez ’04.

As of press time, it was unclear how the vandals gained entrance to the
Club, but Bermudez suggested that a faulty window may have provided easy
access.

Once the vandals were inside, they appear to have gone on a chaotic spree
of violence and theft.

They kicked in the dead-bolted door to the sound equipment room and stole
two microphones, valued at approximately $1,000 by McCandlish.
Additionally, they took McCandlish’s backpack, which contained some 30 CDs,
as well as library books he had been using for an upcoming paper.

Downstairs, they found a couple of paint cans left over from the mural that
had been painted in the Club this past summer. The vandals proceeded to
spill paint all over the floor and walls, smearing it around with a large
broom. Some of the paint was splattered onto the mural while still more
landed on one of the Club’s couches. At the base of the stairs, the vandals
inscribed the following statement into the still-wet paint: “Jackson
Pollock wuz here.” Finally, a window in the Club’s kitchen was smashed, and
glass was scattered across the floor, both upstairs and down.

All in all, the cost of cleaning and repairing Olde Club, as well as
replacing the stolen items, will likely be considerable. McCandlish notes
that the door to the equipment room will need to be replaced, amongst other
things. Bermudez, for her part, hopes that the repairs will be part of a
more comprehensive remodeling of the Club–or at least an upgrade of the
building’s less-than-secure windows and doors.

Although Public Safety declined to comment on the incident, Bermudez
mentioned that two PS officers were on the scene early Sunday morning,
taking pictures of the basement where a few footprints had been left in the
paint.

While the investigation continues, both Bermudez and McCandlish are hoping
that this event will not only alert the campus community to the need for
greater security, but also promote more respect in the treatment of public
areas.

“Ideally, this will serve as a wake-up call for the campus about security,”
said Bermudez. “This was not an isolated incident.”

And McCandlish: “I really feel that as a community we can’t tolerate this
type of behavior. We share a lot of resources on this campus and for a
couple people to get drunk and destroy something that is really for all of
us is absolutely reprehensible.”

by Evelyn Khoo
Living & Arts Editor

Look out Swarthmore, here comes the real world! That was the message Joseph
Altuzarra ’05, the aspiring fashion designer, hopes to send with his
fashion show tonight at 9:30 p.m. in Upper Tarble.

“I feel that people (in Swarthmore) don’t get around enough in the real
world, or at least the real world as opposed to Swarthmore,” said
Altuzarra. “It’s great that here we have so many idealistic, ethical
conversations, but there is a lack of realism–appearance is a part of our
world.”

He has however, taken the skepticism of campus sentiment in his stride. “I
was anticipating a possible negative reaction, but I’d rather get a rise
out of people than indifference. I want to show them how fashion can be
more than just clothes; it can be entertainment, something that is art.”
Altuzarra notes the reasoning behind some of the arguments and defends his
work: “People who would object to fashion would object to it as the
embodiment of superficiality, but I don’t see the harm in making people
look good, because when you look good you feel good, and that’s who we are
too. Swarthmore places a huge emphasis on the mind, but I think that the
body is important too.”

The emphasis Altuzarra places on sensory perception is very much prevalent
in the outfits he has prepared for tonight’s show. The theme of the show
was Altuzarra’s native Paris and the clothes he has produced were drawn
from his memories and experiences in France. “I have clothes which are
named ‘Server (as in waiter) 1,’ ‘Server 2,’ and the fabrics and the
rationale of color I used are all reminiscent of Paris.”

Another key source that Altuzarra draws from is his models’ own styles.
“Kate [Hurster], Chloe [Le Pichon], Hannah [Harvester], Suzanne [Wu]–they
are all people who have very distinctive styles of dressing and the outfits
I designed for them are sort of an exaggeration of their style, something I
picture them wearing if they were in Paris.”

Although he definitely lists Swarthmore and friends at Swarthmore as
influences on his work, Altuzarra does feel that fashion at Swarthmore on
the whole is “extremely conservative. As much as people pride themselves on
being intellectually liberal, I think they aren’t as creative with their
fashion as they could be.”

He hopes to change this feeling with his show: “I’ve had a lot of fun doing
it (putting up the show) and I hope people enjoy it. I have had some
positive reaction, people coming up to tell me they’re really excited about
it. I hope to do a show every semester, but make them more theatrical, with
a stage and stage design and more of a semi-narrative theme. I also really
hope that it will become a tradition, that who knows, maybe ten years from
now Swarthmore will be known for its bi-annual fashion show.”

*****

by Jeremy Schifeling
Co-Managing Editor

Seniors Rob Peterson and Sarah Drescher captured their first-ever
tournament championship at George Washington University’s annual debate
competition, held this past weekend in Washington, DC.

Facing off against 35 teams from schools across the Eastern Seaboard,
Peterson and Drescher advanced to the final round against the University of
Virginia after dispatching squads from William & Mary and the University of
Maryland – College Park in the preceding rounds. Having previously debated
such topics as suffrage for resident aliens and a hypothetical alliance
between Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, the debaters turned
their attention to a more collegiate issue:

“You are the housing director of a state university. There are two freshman
dorms that new students can voluntarily choose between that naturally tend
to end up with racially-segregated student populations. Do you allow this
to continue or do you assign freshman housing to enforce diversity?”

Given the choice between these resolutions, Peterson and Drescher chose to
advocate for the latter policy and, in a hotly-contested round, emerged
victorious on a narrow 5-4 judge’s decision.

With the victory, the duo becomes the fourth-ranked team in the American
Parliamentary Debate Association. In addition, Drescher was named the
second-best speaker overall, while Peterson took fifth place. David Bing
’03 also had a strong individual performance, earning ninth-place speaker
honors.

*****

* According to CNN.com, official and diplomatic sources at the U.N. have
revealed that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council will
receive unedited copies of the Iraqi declaration regarding their weapons of
mass destruction programs. On Friday Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons
inspector, announced that he would first review the report and then pass on
edited versions to the members of the Security Council because of concerns
about the diffusion of the knowledge needed to create weapons of mass
destruction. However, the decision to release the documents to the
permanent members was made after the United States negotiated with the
current president of the Security Council, Colombian U.N. Ambassador
Alfonso Valdiviezo. The report reached the U.N. headquarters in New York
City late Sunday night.

* Rebels in Ivory Coast pushed further east on Sunday, causing the
country’s defense minister to encourage citizens between the ages of 22 and
26 to volunteer for the country’s armed forces. Soldiers from France, who
were present monitoring a mid-October ceasefire, reported that the rebels
were approximately 75 miles east of the Liberian border and closing in on
the town of Guiglo. As the struggle continues evidence of mass graves and
other atrocities has begun to emerge, but there are no definite
explanations of who committed them or why they have occurred yet.

* The joint inquiry by the House and Senate intelligence committees has
drafted a final report, which is scheduled to go before the full committees
for a vote on Tuesday according to congressional aides. Most of the report
is classified and will remain so until the committee votes on it, but it is
said that it recommends that the domestic intelligence powers of the CIA be
curtailed while the possibility of creating a new agency in charge of
domestic matters, possibly modeled after Great Britain’s MI5, is studied.

*****

Linguistics lecture
Scheuer Room, 4:15 p.m.

Women in Science dinner
Sharples Room 4, 6:00 p.m.

Good Schools PA meeting
Mephistos, 9:00 p.m.

Joseph Altuzarra Fashion Show
Upper Tarble, 9:30 p.m.

SWIL Movie Night: “Raiders of the Lost Ark”
Kirby Lecture Hall, 10:00 p.m.

*****

SPORTS UPDATE

The results from this weekend’s athletic matches were unavailable at the
time of publication.

*****

There are no contests scheduled for today or tomorrow.

*****

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes
wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”
–Douglas Adams

*****
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